I began teaching myself how to code in August of 2017. Despite my recent interest in a career in development, I've been a lifelong computer hobbyist. Learning to code is not the first time I've taught myself new skills. As a teenager in the mid 1990s, I taught myself how to DJ purely out of an interest and passion for DJing. That led me to learning about audio, and recording my own music mixes. I also spent years teaching myself how to record, digitize, clean up, restore, enhance, and master analog sources like vinyl and cassette tape for digital playback. This later spilled over into audio editing and down the road into video editing as well. I'm always excited to learn new skills.

For nearly 16 years I worked in the market research world for Nielsen. During my tenure for Nielsen, I primarily worked for two different business units. The first concentrated on films and the test marketing of film advertising. I was primarily a survey programmer. Nielsen has its own in house development software, and I was the lead programmer. During the last two and a half years of my employment, I was brought into the TV content solutions unit. The primary focus was the testing of television pilots. That business was really exciting, and my favorite time at Nielsen during my long career.

Life is always changing. In 2017 it was time for a new challenge. With encouragement from my father, who is a lifelong software developer and engineer, I finally decided to commit to learning software development. The first few months were spent with Python, learning programming fundamentals. My intent was always to learn web development, so after the brief introduction I changed focus to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. In January 2018 I began enrolling in Udemy courses. Since my discovery of Udemy, I've completed quite a few classes, with a huge queue of classes I'm still eager to take. As far as long term plans go, I'm definitely interested in front end development. I'm really enjoying learning how to create interesting UI/UX solutions. I have done some back end work as well, which I've enjoyed, and had fun learning. I've been doing a bit of freelance so far, primarily working on projects for friends. Most of my clients have been familiar with WordPress, so for the time being, I've been learning what is capable with WordPress as a CMS.